


Welcome to the War

by Ardently_Admired



Category: Original Work
Genre: But it's a bitchin' read, Espionage, F/F, F/M, General Crow, I promise that'll get better, Imma research, Interrogation (kinda), Julian Fortin, Liutenant McIntyre, Milo Worthing, Multi, Original Character(s), Rape/Non-con Elements, Spies & Secret Agents, Spy - Freeform, War, World War I, at least, but later, not historically accurate, not this first chapter, war hospitals, wwi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-18
Updated: 2018-01-19
Packaged: 2019-03-06 14:52:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,037
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13413603
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ardently_Admired/pseuds/Ardently_Admired
Summary: Milo Worthing serves in the United States Army in WWI. A good soldier, a hard worker, brave, loyal, liked by the commanding officers. There's just a slight hitch- she's a woman. A 1914 Mulan story, this plucky and heroic young woman has to fight many battles - many of which are beyond the front lines.





	1. Discovery

**Author's Note:**

> Hello all,
> 
> I've missed writing, but hopefully can get back into it with this one! This will be an ongoing series, and we'll see what we can make of it. :) Enjoy

“Get up.”

The voice was sharp, with a dusky edge that came from years of barking orders and a cigarette in a free moment. The words were accented by a sharp kick to the metal bedframe. 

Milo Worthing's eyes flew open, and she scrabbled for the covers; it was too late. The general and his men knew. A slow fiery build began deep in Milo's stomach, a twisting knot that comes with guilt, anger, frustration and fear. 

“What is the meaning of this?” General Crow's voice was demanding. He stood in the middle of the canvas-covered barracks, his words nearly lost in the heavy rain outside. He was in his uniform, starched olive green with a gleaming row of badges and medals. He was in his late fifties, but his physique was that of a man twenty years younger than him. 

Milo twisted the bedclothes between her fingers, a hot prickling beginning behind her eyes. “Well...sir....I, uh....I didn't think...”

“You're darn right you didn't think.” General Crow spat. “You didn't think, and because of it, I'm going to look like a blind fool. Do you think this is some kind of schoolgirl joke, Worthing?”

“No, sir, but-”

“This is a war, and in a war, I have a job to do. It's a massive-scale badminton match, and I'm not going to lose because some prissy little shuttlecock decided to mess it up!”

Milo's cheeks burned, that twisting heat in her stomach growing more relentless as the general's words cut through her like a knife. “Yes sir.”

General Crow stared down at her for a moment, his chest heaving. “Who's your commanding officer?”

“Lieutenant McIntyre, sir.” Milo swallowed hard, her mouth suddenly dry. 

“Bring him in here.” The General turned away, and Milo flung back the covers, practically flying off the cot and out of the tent, into the rain. 

She was soaked through in an instant, the soft white shirt and thick khaki slacks becoming dark and saturated. The rain plastered her brown crew cut, once so long and curly, to her skull, water dripping off her eyelashes. The mud on the forest ground was cold and pillowy beneath her bare feet, making tiny squelching noises as she moved through the camp. 

How could she have been so stupid? 1914, New York City. She had been drawn in by the posters, the idea of glory and honor, and living, fighting and dying for your country. She was twenty-one when she went to the nearest recruitment center, and she had noticed immediately that she was the only woman in a throng of young men.

Milo left that day, but came back a week later, in a crisp coat and tie, hair cropped short and face hidden behind a fedora. She lowered her voice to answer the questions, and prayed that the smooth stones in her coat pockets would make her heavier on the scale. She passed the physical and medical pre-examinations, and was given a set of tags and a train ticket. She pushed her body to the limit every day, pushups, and sit ups, and running mile after mile in the heat, the cold, the rain, the dark. 

But she loved every minute of it. She loved the feeling of patriotism, of loyalty and bravery. She loved the rush of sacrifice, of courage. She knew, somehow, that it was abnormal to find joy in war – but it had allowed her to find herself, in a way she hadn't been permitted to before. Here, in the barracks, with the other soldiers, she was Milo Worthing, just another boy from New York. She laughed at their jokes, and told a few of her own. She could arm-wrestle them, drink with them, tell stories with them.

And they all saw her as an equal, as a friend. 

Milo entered Lieutenant McIntyre's tent, realizing too late that her wet clothing and muddy feet would leave a mess on the canvas floor. She shifted awkwardly as Lieutenant McIntyre turned away from his lamplit table, heavy circles beneath his eyes. Again, she realized too late she had disturbed him in the middle of his cartography work. Dozens of papers and maps were strewn across the table, red pins sticking up here and there from the sketched landscapes. 

“Worthing, what are you doing in here? Do you realize what time it is, son?”

He didn't know yet. Milo bit her lip, then bowed her head, sprinkling the floor with rainwater. “General Crow wants to see you in the west barracks, sir.”

McIntyre snorted, his uniform immaculate despite the lateness of the hour. “And so he sent you over here in the rain?” He shook his head, picking up a folded coat from the foot of the bed and tossing it to Milo. “Put this on, we can't have you freezing to death. You're one of the best men we've got.”

Milo shrugged the jacket over her wet shoulders, turning the collar up against her neck. “Thank you, sir.”

The older man didn't look at her for a minute. “Worthing, have a seat.”

Milo's heart thudded in her chest, pounding loud and hard against her ribs as she moved to a battered rocker near the table. The gas lamp brought McIntyre's weathered face into a sharper view. His eyes were cloudy with fatigue, and despite being only thirty or so, his hands were rough and calloused as he lifted a cigarette to his lips and struck a match against the side of the lamp.

He exhaled sharply, a plume of smoke wreathing his face. “I know.”

Milo looked up, the intense beating of her heart stopping for a split second, compressing her lungs. “I...sir?”

McIntyre shook his head, absently twisting the cigarette with his fingers. “I've known since you joined up. You're...you're graceful, ya know? Like a dancer. And you can lower your voice all you like, but you're a woman, plain as the nose on my face.”

“Sir....but...” Milo swallowed again. “Why didn't you...why...”

 

“Why didn't I tell ol' General Persnickety Pants?” McIntyre laughed roughly, smoke spilling from the burnt orange tip between his lips. “He would have thrown you out, and we need you, Milo Worthing.”

Milo smiled, a real smile, one that started in her toes and traveled up through her bloodstream all the way to her eyes. We need you. Such sweet words had never been spoken to her, about her before. But that bright feeling lasted only seconds before it was replaced by a dull throb deep in her chest. “General Crow knows now, sir, and...” Milo realized suddenly there were tears in her eyes, hot and prickling. “And you know he won't keep me.”

“Come on, Ms. Worthing.” McIntyre stubbed out the half-smoked cigarette against one of his maps. “You and I both know that if he was going to throw you out he'd have done so already.”

He reached for an umbrella, fumbling with the catch while Milo watched, brow furrowed. “But sir, do you mean that he won't...”

“He might not,” McIntyre muttered, popping the umbrella open. “Not if I have any say in it, and not if the United States Army wants to win this war.”

With that, he strode out into the rain, boots splashing through the puddles. Milo stood for a moment, watching his olive-green jacket become a speck on the other side of camp. He hadn't said for her to accompany him, and General Crow hadn't said to return. 

She pushed back in the rocker, closing her eyes as the heat of the gas lamp washed over her tingling toes. The tent was warm, more so than outside anyways, and the light dance of the rain against the the ground was soothing. Milo had barely let these thoughts fill her mind before she was roughly jerked awake for the second time that night. 

She blinked wildly, looking up. General Crow, Lieutenant McIntyre and a handful of other soldiers of various ranking were looking down at her. She felt a familiar hot flush beginning in her cheeks as she scrambled to her feet. “General Persnicke- Crow. Sir?”

The General eyed her. Behind him, Lieutenant McIntyre wore a small smirk, like the cat that ate the proverbial canary. 

“Milo Worthing, what you've done is beyond retribution. You deliberately lied to the recruiters, to your officers and fellow soldiers. You've put yourself into danger, and you've undermined the authority of myself, Liutenant McIntyre and the rest of the army.” General Crow's eyes were piercing into Milo's, they were overly bright and they seemed to cut through the stillness of the night, through the inside of the tent, right through to her soul. “Do you have any idea of the severity of what you have done?” 

“Yes, sir.” Milo lowered her eyes to the ground in shame. “I know that I jeopardized a lot of lives, and that I acted in...malice aforethought. I'm sorry, sir.”

The General made a low noise in the back of his throat. “Normally, I'd have you disciplined - severely - and sent home.” 

Milo nodded, slowly, a wave of nausea sweeping through her at the thought. “Yes, sir, I understand sir.”

General Crow nodded. “But the Germans, the Italians- they're constantly changing their plans, and we need someone with your intelligence, and your talent.”

Need. The word seemed to fill the tent. Milo looked up, in shock and surprise. “Sir?”

“We need more agents, in our secret service unit.” Lieutenant McIntyre spoke up. “We think you'll be just what we need.”

“After all,” General Crow's voice was less harsh now. “If you could fool me and my men for eleven months, you can fool the German soldiers too.”

“Sir, does this mean I can stay?” Milo burst out, feeling the hopelessness dissipate within her. The gaslamp seemed to glow brighter.

Lieutenant McIntyre held out his hand, a warm smile crossing his features. “Welcome to the war, Agent Worthing.”


	2. The Fort

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Agent Worthing's new position takes her to a war hospital in France, where she meets the young soldier Julian Fortin, from whom she needs information. But the closed-off young man is less than willing to give it up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNING: Non-consensual elements in this chapter.  
> This one was tricky to write :/ But hopefully the next ones will go easier!

The golden afternoon light cast a warm glow over the cobbled streets. Pigeons flocked in bunches to the tops of buildings, the rustling of thousands of downy feathers a staple in the ambient noise. There was a general feeling of calm in the streets of Paris, though to even the most self-concerned man in France could feel the undercurrent, the web of tension weaving its way through the bright streets.

And the closer you looked, the more one seemed to see. Mothers and daughters, strolling through the markets, the skin of their foreheads and beside their eyes bearing the marks of endless days and nights of worrying, of uncertainty. The young women boasting rings on their fingers, promises of marriages that were now mere speculation. Headlines emblazoned in black and white, a stark proclamation of the war efforts.

And now, a young girl, her dark hair twisted up in an elegant knot, curls dusting the back of her neck, was climbing the stairs of an old french abbey, converted into a hospital, a peace zone. She was dressed smartly, in a clean navy blouse and skirt set, a leather bag slung over her shoulder.

She paused at the entrance. “Pardon me, ma'am,” she said, stopping a nurse by the door. “But can you tell me where the soldiers are?”

The nurse chuckled, pushing a few strands of hair that had escaped her cap off her face. “Dearie, this is a war hospital. There's a soldier in every room.”

The woman nodded, and continued down the hall, the low heels clicking against the cool stone of the floor, intermingling with the low hush of the building.

Milo Worthing was no stranger to war. She herself had been on the very front lines, seeing for herself the pain and the suffering, the blistering heat, the teary-eyed agony of smoke, the consistent pain of ringing ears, hearing for days after the shots as they were fired.

But to see it now, here, outside the blurry haze of the battlefield? It was something else entirely. Here, in the quiet confines of an old abbey, the soldiers' soot-streaked uniforms were distinct against the white of the sheets, blood startlingly crimson, bruises a deep, velvety purple. Their eyes, sunken into circles of exhaustion, were cutting into her very soul, and somehow looking right through her at the same moment.

She could see it, in their eyes, remnants of the field. Reminders, constant and violating, of the endless rounds of bullets, the slick mud of the trenches, the dryness of a scratched and rough throat after days of little water. It was all there, shrouded in a cloudy haze, locked inside them, like birds, beating their wings until bloody against the bars of an unyielding cage.

Milo stopped, finally, at a bed in a corner. A light flutter had arisen in her chest, the beginnings of what she knew would become pure adrenaline, every response in her body begging for action, for something to happen.

She cleared her throat, once, twice, and the young man stirred. He lay in his slacks and a simple white shirt. His skin was scrubbed clean, and looked clear, save for a mottled patch of bruising on his collarbone. He looked young, Milo guessed about twenty-one, or twenty-two, and roguish, ready for a fight. His reddish-blonde hair was ruffled, and his eyes, so pale they really couldn't be considered blue, had a lightness.

Milo smiled, the easy kind that didn't quite reach her eyes. I have a job to do. Good lord, let this go well. “My name is Milo Worthing.”

The soldier grinned, baring his teeth in a catlike way. “Milo. Now there's a name y'don't hear often.” He spoke with a lilt, his tongue stumbling over the words as though they were all in a rush to escape his lips. “You got a cigarette on ya, Milo?”

Milo kept the steady smile curved on her lips, despite the frantic pounding of her heart. “I believe I do, sir.” She unclasped her bag, fingers shaking. Get it together. “Here you are.”  
The soldier heaved his slim frame to a sitting position, then angled the cigarette between his teeth. “Thanks, Miss Milo.” He kept his eyes trained on her as he picked up the book of matches from the bedside, struck one on the back of the book, and brought it to his lips. When he exhaled, a thin stream of smoke spilled from his mouth and nose; he leaned back and closed his eyes, the small bed creaking under his movements. “So, what brings you all the way out here?”

Milo's heart pounded furiously against her ribs. She pressed her palms against her thighs in a vain effort to keep them from shaking before she replied. “I- all the way out here?”

“Well sure,” the soldier's eyes slitted open, enough only for her to see the thin blue crescents beneath his feathery lashes. “You're an American.”

Milo's face must have betrayed her shock for the young man laughed, a rough sound. “Hey, it's pretty obvious sweetheart. But it's all good, ain't it? We're all allies here.”

Unbidden, a smile crossed her lips. “Listen, I've got a couple questions for you...” her voice trailed as she stared at the soldier. “Ah...forgive me.” She flushed, bright and hot. “I've forgotten your name.”

“Julian.” He closed his eyes again, taking a deep drag on the cigarette. “Julian Fortin, not that the last name's done me any good out there.”

Milo sat, quietly. She knew better than to speak at this point. Just let Julian think, let him remember for long enough, and he'd tell her everything she needed to know. Minutes ticked by in a heavy silence, the silence that stood before something deeper.

“My father was a good man.” When Julian spoke, his voice was thicker, quieter, somber as a man at a funeral. “He tried, he really did. But he-” there was a pause, here, a heavy silence that spoke of years of misery. “He got himself into some trouble. A fair bit of trouble, really, and it caused all sorts of rubbish for me and mum. It's why I joined up, see? I've got a good home, a mother who deserves better- I had to do something to bring back my family's reputation, and-and if I can come home a hero, I've done right.”

Julian's eyes seemed to darken, just slightly, before his cocky, confident grin returned. “Anyways, you said you had somethin' to ask me, eh, Miss Milo?” 

The grin. It held too much. Milo had seen it too many times, in soldiers, in officers. Julian was lying through his teeth. 

Milo's heart hadn't ever really stopped its frantic tattoo, but it had faded as the young man had been speaking. Now the drumbeat returned in full force, but she kept her face impassive. From inside the satchel, she withdrew a sheaf of papers. “Mister Fortin.” Her hands shook, rustling the papers. “I'm curious- can you tell me what you know of Abigail Lea?” She passed him the papers, breath catching in her throat as she did so.

He didn't look at them, keeping his eyes and heavy brow on Milo's face. “I can tellya a fair bit. Why?”

“I need to know where she is.” 

Julian smiled, slightly, flicking his cigarette onto the floor, before swinging his legs over the side of the bed and sitting up, leaning over with his elbows resting on his knees. He looked up, gaze dark as he breathed deeply, the sharp and acrid scent of smoke too close to Milo for her liking. 

“The thing is, Miss Worthing,” Julian’s voice was low, and measured, completely calm. “I can’t do that. If Abigail Lea wants to be found, you’ll find her. But let me tell you something, and let me make it very clear.”

The soldier leaned forward, further, his mouth right up against Milo’s ear, lips brushing her skin. “If I were you, Miss Milo,” his hand landed on her knee, sliding up her stockings to her thigh, twitching aside her skirt hem. Milo sat, frozen, feeling a hot prickling beginning in her chest, a pounding and rushing in her head. “I’d stay away from things that don’t concern you.”


End file.
